"Solace"

Earl Sweatshirt is still going through things. The California rapper’s recent I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside struggles with an antisocial streak, as its stark title and black-and-white cover suggest. Earl raps on the anxiety of finding home ("Faucet"), his brother rhymes after hearing a friend died ("DNA"), and to deal with it all, Earl stays faded. But the softly-released "solace", a tranquil 10-minute rap suite, seeks out a glimmer of hope in the dark.

Earl's typically dense rhyming does not command this abstract track; he mumbles through his first two verses and stumbles into the third. A trip-up makes him repeat the most crushing lines: "I got my grandmama hands/ I start to cry when I see 'em/ 'Cause they remind me of seeing her/ These are the times I needed her most cause I feel defeated." Parents connect generational dots to see themselves in their offspring, but such insight is more easily lost on their kin. Earl grasps the great distance of loved ones, even when he sees them so close.